1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of displaying technology, and in particular to an antistatic structure of an array substrate.
2. The Related Arts
Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) have a variety of advantages, such as thin device body, low power consumption, and being free of radiation, and are thus widely used. Most of the liquid crystal displays that are currently available in the market are backlighting liquid crystal displays, which comprise a casing, a liquid crystal display panel received in the casing, and a backlight module arranged in the casing to be opposite to the liquid crystal display panel. The operation principle of the liquid crystal display panel is that liquid crystal molecules interposed between two parallel glass substrates and a drive voltage is applied to the two glass substrates to control the rotation of the liquid crystal molecules in order to refract out light emitting from the backlight module to generate images.
ESD (Electro-Static Discharge) has long been an unsolved problem of the semiconductor industry. ESD may lead to reduction of yield rate, increase of cost, and lowering of throughput. In the manufacture of liquid crystal displays, particularly the manufacture of liquid crystal display panels, ESD has also long affected the quality of the liquid crystal displays.
ESD is generally generated by three causes:
The first cause is particles. Any particle may cause damage to a device and even results in discarding. Thus, in the manufacture operations of semiconductors, control of particles is an important job.
The second is engineering condition and raw material. In the manufacture of the liquid crystal display panels, various operations may have conditions that generate static electricity, including deposition process, photo process, etching process, stripping process, and cleaning process. Further, the raw materials used in these processes may also induce static electricity due to material defects.
The third is concerning design factors. The quality of design may directly affect the condition associated with static electricity.
To improve the quality of a product and to reduce the cost of manufacture, ESD protection is commonly employed in the manufacture operations of the liquid crystal display panels. The EDS protection is generally of two types. The first one is internal component protection of a liquid crystal display panel, which generally comprises an ESD ring arranged at starting and terminating ends of conductive lines (such as gate lines and data lines) of the liquid crystal display panel. The second type is protection applied to peripheral circuits of a liquid crystal display panel, which is used to protect the panel peripheral circuits from damages caused by static electricity in an array manufacturing process and a rear stage process. In a conventional structure of a TFT (Thin-Film Transistor) array substrate, the sequence of layers of films is: first metal layer (Gate/Com), gate insulation layer (GI), active layer, second metal layer (S/D), passivation layer (PVX), and transparent conductive layer (Indium Tin Oxide, ITO). To control the cost of a product, an illuminating operation is carried out to grade a product after a cutting operation of in the manufacturing process of a cell stage is finished so that a qualified liquid crystal display panel can be used in a module. To enable the illuminating operation to be carried out in the manufacturing process of the cell stage while not to affect a normal illuminating operation to be carried out in a module stage, as shown in FIG. 1, it is a common practice to arrange shorting bars 100 on some circuits of the peripheral patterning of the liquid crystal display panel during the manufacturing process of the array substrate in order to reduce the ESD phenomenon. After grading the liquid crystal display panel has been completed through illuminating in the manufacturing process of the cell stage, laser is applied to cut off the connections of the shorting bars 100 with the data lines and the gate lines. However, in such technology, damages resulting from ESD may still occur at metal intersections of the shorting bars 100 due to abnormal discharge caused by plasma in dry etching operations of the insulation protection layer and the active layer and the quality of a product may thus be affected.